14.01.2019:
PRECISION MEDICINE IN CANCER TREATMENT Precision medicine is an approach to cancer patients care, which gives the opportunity to clinicians to select treatments that are most likely to help their patients based upon the genetic profile of their cancer.
Precision medicine is synonymous to personalized medicine.
Patients’ tumors have genetic changes that cause cancer cells to multiply and spread. These genetic changes in a cancer patient may not occur in other cancer patients with the same cancer.
Genetic tests are very important to the decision process which treatment will be more effective for a patient’s tumor, sparing the patient from receiving treatments that are not likely to help.
Treatments based on genetic tests are drugs known as targeted therapies.
The identification of genetic changes requires mainly biopsy and often blood (Liquid biopsy). The biopsy sample is sent to a special lab where special genetic tests are done with specific techniques.
Once genetic changes are discovered the researchers trying to discover drugs which can target these changes. The discovery is confirmed through clinical trials.
Also, researchers are trying to discover new targeted drugs in case that cancer cells have developed resistance to the current known drug.
All genetic changes and targeted drugs are part of daily research and clinical activities. Patients data information that are collected in world data are extremely important and useful for clinical research and treatment.
